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NRx with Chinese Characteristics

While recognizing (at least some) of the manifold complexities involved, Outside in holds to a fundamentally cladisticdetermination of Neoreaction. NRx is irreducibly Occidental, emerging from a highly-specific twig of Anglophone Ultra-Protestantism. It is only to be expected that most of its adherents are situated within English-speaking countries, exposed intimately to radically accelerating civilizational decomposition. The response is natural:

As a guest of the Middle Kingdom, the problem looks very different. The very last thing that is wanted here, from a reactionary perspective, is a reboot. On the contrary, the overwhelming priority is conservative, which is to say — more precisely — the imperative that whatever modernization takes place absolutely does not take the Western path. Near-total stasis would be preferable to even the most deeply intelligent reform, if the latter included the slightest hint of submission to the democratic ratchet (spelling inevitable, comprehensive social destruction). Among the reasons to support the thoroughgoing extirpation of all liberal-democratic inclination from Chinese society is the consequential real liberation this would make possible, by confirming a path of Confucian Modernization free of demotic corrosion.

China is to be defended, precisely because it is alien to the Cathedral. For this same reason, it can be predicted with great confidence that the Occidental memetic onslaught against Chinese Civilization will be escalated to an extreme, as it becomes clear progressive pseudo-teleology is being rejected here. If China succeeds in refusing the Cathedral, civilization will survive. There can be no more significant — or practically counter-revolutionary — cause.

It is unseemly for ‘reactionaries’ to be plotting revolutions, or anything remotely like them. Insofar as ethno-nationalistic loyalties lead them in this direction, it is a sign that one strand of romantic demotism continues to poison their souls, even as more clearly formalized democratic impulses are properly repudiated. To argue that “we want our own state” is a nakedly populist perversion. The state — any state — is answerable only to the Mandate of Heaven, and not to the people. It answers to the Mandate of Heaven exactly insofar as it shields itself from the voice of the people. (Any state that is sensitive to the mob is a dog that deserves to die.)

A foreign guest in China lives under a close proxy of colonial government, and no superior arrangement is perhaps possible on this earth. Given the history of Anglospheric relations with China, this is of course ironical, but it is an irony rich in meaning. Hong Kong, or Concession-era Shanghai, were far better governed during the colonial period than metropolitan Britain itself. If it is now possible for an expatriate to find refuge in such places, stripped of all positive political rights, and freed into voiceless appreciation of efficient, alien administration, the democratic ruination that has consumed his homeland has a demonstrable outside. The only ‘political’ decency open to him in this situation is utter termination of the Occidental revolutionary soul, and the cultivation of docility before the Mandate of Heaven. He is, after all, surrounded by civilized people who availed themselves of equivalent opportunities under inverse circumstances. These societies work. Gnon manifestly blesses them.

To lead a decent and productive life in a place worthy of it is the highest political good. Insofar as Exit mechanisms obtain, the tacit choices in such a life reinforce what merits reinforcement, while disinvesting that which requires the lash of disinvestment. Angry antagonism has no useful place. On the largest scale, evil is best punished by abandonment.

This is not to criticize secessionist tendencies in rotting societies — which are rather to be enthusiastically applauded — but it is to suggest that the deep dynamics levering the collapsed world apart are more likely to begin from strategic neglect than oppositional rage. It is not that one first fights in order later to escape. Rather, one escapes from the beginning, to hasten the enemy’s collapse. (Those most adamant about the righteousness of their confrontation with the Great Foe are the same who — in very concrete terms — are most likely to be resourcing it.)

You think it is feeding on your blood, to spawn its horrors? Then stop donating your blood. It is not difficult, at least in principle.

The Outside is a place, and not a dream. NRx with Chinese characteristics recommends that you search for it.

ADDED: If you consider yourself an anti-democratic biorealist, and you don’t think Order will come from the East, it’s probably because tribal loyalty is running your mind.

ADDED: Legionnaire casts an impressively sober eye over the discussion.

How many taxes do you pay again? You do know the tax rates in China are higher than almost anywhere else.

Foreigners in China live under Chinese law, not colonial law. Which is *very* different.

The only thing they had in common is that the foreigners under Chinese law, and the Chinese under British law, mostly do not know or understand the law they are under. Ignorance is bliss perhaps.

I assume that watching BBC or reading The Guardian induces in you a severe feeling of disgust and hopelessness. If you understood what they say in CCTV-1 I assure you, you wouldn’t feel any different. It’s pretty bad out there too.

I understand very well the feeling of freedom one gets from living abroad, living among but not part of the tribe, and thus not expected to conform to all those tribal behavioral quirks that the natives are pressured into. You can listen to their groupthink without having to join it.

But that doesn’t mean their groupthink is any better than the groupthink of the tribe you’ve left behind. If you have any evidence of Chinese administration being better and more efficient, by all means lets discuss it. You haven’t though, and the Mandate of Heaven is hardly the official ideology in China today. Last time I checked they were talking of strengthening 民主 this and 民主 that.

I agree. China seems to have abandoned Confucian principles long ago for the same revolutionist nonsense that has laid waste to the west. They may be authoritarian in their aspect, but they are definitely leftist and authoritarian “for the people”. In other words, they’re totalitarian. Now, I do feel that the Confucian principles may benefit us, but “going east” is no answer, since they’re as demotist as we are and much more brutal about it in many cases. Japan still holds on to it’s old traditions and structure, for the most part, but even they are battling with a very bizarre form of Progressivism (the harajuku and kawaii nonsense) that seems to lead their youth to rejecting sex altogether (even in traditional sexual arrangements), rather than sluttiness. This is resulting in a terrible birth rate and possibly the disappearance of their culture, in the long term. Taiwan still hangs on to Confucianist culture, but it has gone “full western” in its method of governance.

You’re far too influenced by surface ideology. There is absolutely no doubt that China is vastly better run than any Western country. Aspire to limit the franchise? How about starting somewhere that limits all political voice to a meritocratically-selected neo-mandarinate, with no plans — or even plausible mechanisms — to universalize it?

Good governance should be discounted for the problem involved. Yes, I’d agree city states are going to more efficiently governed than sprawling empires in absolute terms, although the achievement is of course far less impressive. Monaco is run better than Singapore? I’m far too ignorant about the former to be dogmatic about the comparison, but I’m skeptical.

The Heritage world economic freedom index is an extremely reliable proxy for good government. Top two slots are always taken by Hong Kong and Singapore.

Alfred Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 2:46 am

I do have to say, though, that while it sounds like I’m doing nothing but being contrary, I do find Confucianism very appealing, in itself. However, I would say the same of Thomism.

Alfred Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 2:56 am

Singapore is another I am impressed by, but I guess you may have a point with the city-state phenomenon.

The secret to their success is apparently an economy based entirely upon tourism and gambling and a VERY strict immigration policy.

Alfred Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 3:01 am

“As China has shrugged off all but purely nominal ‘Marxism’ it’s Confucianism has been patiently restored, with tacit official support.”

This is true, but I’ve read stories about the “revival” of Confucianism from 2007, 2011, and 2013; each treating it as if China was just now reviving it. However, it is possible that it has been slowly reviving the whole time and our media simply “rediscovers” this fact from time to time.

I will be reading Mou Zongsan before I make any further judgment. Thank you for the suggestion.

Alfred Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 3:11 am

Ah…I found it. Somehow, my reply ended up in the wrong place. (Maybe I wasn’t paying attention when I typed it).

Anyway, I meant to put one here too.

I follow Heritage’s economic freedom index, as well, and I believe that they leave Monaco out. I don’t know why, but I don’t believe it is included.

Switzerland is usually very high on the list too, and I believe they just made a step in the right direction with regards to immigration. We’ll see how that goes, as time passes.

@admin,
Hong Kong is a British (Western) accomplishment. It says something for China that they haven’t messed it up. But it says something for Britain that they built it in the first place, yet we know that Britain is a crapsack.
As for Singapore, was it Spandrell that pointed out that it sucks in high IQ types from elsewhere and ensures that they have 1 child or no children? That’s a society to widely emulate if apres moi le deluge is good statesmanship.

admin Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 4:13 am

“… it says something for Britain that they built it in the first place” — I hope you don’t think I’m disagreeing with that. Without the Anglosphere, no Tiger economies. (This is my culture.)

Alfred Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 3:22 am

If, however, we are talking Hong Kong and Singapore. Heck, I’ve been tempted to move to both myself; and this is even before I thought of myself as Neoreactionary (as recently as six months ago). But, after careful consideration, I understood that their ways are not our ways and that I would always be an alien.

You’re right when you state that we have no Occidental NRx state. We will make one. Democracy will fail and we’ll be waiting there to pick up Western Civilization from democracy’s ashes. I am confident of this. I, personally, believe it’ll be more of a clannish monarchist system (like the Anglo-Saxon and Viking sacral kingships), at least at first, simply because this is the natural way we Anglo-Europeans organize. The reorganization may look very much like this: http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/fall2013/features/up-in-arms.html

I for one, look forward to a Greater Appalachian kingdom (more like “kingdoms” actually), since I’m from Kentucky and I’m tired of Yankees dictating to me what I’m supposed to think.

Some of the Asian Tigers are still resisting Cathedralization, so that precedent is encouraging, no?

Edward Reply:May 30th, 2015 at 8:18 pm

Confucianism still runs strong underneath the surface. China still has tremendous potential, and it is certainly governed more effectively than the US. I’ll be moving there next year after graduation, and I will not be coming back. At first, I questioned my study of the Chinese language, but now I know that it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

I’m sorry I’m a little late to the thread. I only recently discovered this website and am new to this community.

1. Another swipe at nationalism. But, as you say, your breed of NRx is grounded in Anglophone Ultra-Protestantism, not Nietzschean-Evolaism, for which the realization of hierarchy through (meant directionally) the group is not anathema. http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id80.html. Your intellectual lineage is why you failed, miserably, to grasp the broader meaning of “right” contra “left”. Take an evolutionary step back and then gaze at the horizon of possibilities. Continual anagenesis of your clade without inter-reactionary cross breeding will lead to a cul-de-sac.

2. By heaven, the Mandate is both given and revoked, conditioned on the fulfillment of the people’s good (and attested to by their (un)willingness to revolt), a good which can be understood in a plurality of manners. In unrecognizing (or rejecting) the plurality of reactionary possibilities, you iterate a basal (non-vulgar) liberal offense — unsurprising, given your lineage.

Nationalism is the one piece of demotic modernism large chunks of the ‘ultra-right’ want to keep. If they’re serious about that, they’re not in any very substantial sense on the right at all. They’re ethno-socialists (as this thread is so abundantly confirming).

“Arch-liberal of the extreme right” was how Kuehnelt-Leddihn described himself — sounds good to me.

If nationalism is a thing, it’s like they haven’t read Evola at all. Frankly though, it is hard to tell; I don’t understand WN at all either in practical terms or in terms of its underlying philosophy (both seem too riddled with holes to do anything but sink.) and overall WN is not Evolian at all, except as a gloss like Fascism which gave him a nod while ignoring what he was actually saying.

This isn’t to say I think China has done any better, but the general terminology and outward mode of communism (even if it is a facade) is poisoning, and always in danger of a zealous reform ‘to the letter’. As the West is dogged continually by Calvin in various forms because of the pre-eminence with which it treats Augustine in his anti-Pelagian diatribe, so will any China that does not throw off all vestiges of Communism be subject to the spirit of ‘reform’ or even ‘radical conservatism’ reaching back to the outward philosophy and idealism of the revolution.

My final conclusion is to adhere to the ancient discipline of stability: Wherever you are, do not leave there easily.

Right as you, not I, define it. Hierarchy can be realized on the group level. Ergo, collectivism (your left) does not conflict with hierarchy (my right). More so, collectivism does not preclude hierarchy within groups. It necessitates it. Example: the hierarchically organized cell collectives that form complex organisms.

Another critique: your cladism. Relationship is defined by more than cladogenesis; modification matters — a philosophy’s genotype is more telling of its expressed formal nature then is its clade (prospective genealogy).

A reductio ad absurdum: the viability of your reactionary breed in a demographically non-anglophone protestant region; the persistence of such demographics sans nationalism.

I’m not Chinese. I’m not Asian. I’m not inclined to live at the mercy of others at all, certainly if I’m the one who doesn’t fit in. When the evil democracies go China won’t have anyone to export to, and it’s a different China I daresay.

We’re Occidental and going to have to stay true to ourselves. I wish you well in you endeavor, however it is chancy and for the few.

Then there’s the specter of running from the Cathedral, especially this version. This isn’t Stalin, it’s Lolita’s Quimby.

It’s at best a Gay Waiter in Honolulu except his family were White Communists. He reads from plastic card called a teleprompter.

The specter of running is in the mirror. Especially running from that .

That’s true. It’s even obvious, but I failed to even think of that. Not only has the East mostly abandoned Confucianism, but if they were as Reactionary as we profess to be, we would forever be “outsiders” to them and never belong, even if we wanted to. No, the correct way for us to achieve our goals is to establish tradition and reject progressivism here, in our lands. That, or we could just all move to Monaco. However, Monaco is already far enough in the right direction that there’s a good chance they wouldn’t even welcome the rest of us.

The Soviet Union had gotten close to abandoning their Eastern Orthodoxy. Though, admittedly, there must have been a strong undercurrent of Orthodox culture still alive for it to revive so quickly post-Soviet. However, as it stands, the Communist Chinese order considered Confucianism essentially verboten. You also have to realize that Confucianism is less of a core of Chinese culture than Taoism (which Confucianism draws inspiration from) is. And Taoism is not exactly the sort of philosophical standing I’d want to see a Reactionary community take.

admin Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 2:40 am

I think you’re wrong about all of these points (after the first two sentences). Confucianism is responsible for the organization and perpetuation of Chinese culture, within which Daoism is an essentially but relatively inchoate component. As China has shrugged off all but purely nominal ‘Marxism’ it’s Confucianism has been patiently restored, with tacit official support. Important matters proceed slowly — and that’s a good thing. In questions of deep civilizational destiny, surface disturbances count for little. If you’re serious about this stuff, you should read Mou Zongsan — he’s the greatest Chinese philosopher of the modern epoch, and he works through the relationship between Daoism and Confucianism with rigorous exactitude.

As Mou also explains in great detail, the Confucian assimilation of Buddhism as a thread of Chinese culture is no less important. (Most Chinese will describe themselves as Buddhist, engage in numerous Daoist practices, and defer to the cultural authority of Confucianism).

Alfred Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 3:03 am

I tried to make a reply to this, but my browser went wonky. Anyway, I’ll reserve further judgment until I read Mou Zongsan.

All of the Christian thoughts are still thought, even the neo-pagans at college are all about loving their neighbor. Nietzsche finds a dragon to wrestle with and it is Christianity. The neo-platonic form that Western Christendom took in its undulation between Augustine and Aquinas (or between the anti-Pelagian and the Scholastic) sticks around to this day, though the accusations leveled against it vary. Marxism is a variant of Scholasticism (and the Jesuits are natural marxists in many ways) while the Darwinian edge rides along the predestinarian path set forth by Augustine: dysgenics as an STD, birth as destiny, and the emotional convulsions freed up by this ‘realization’.

The Cathedral is so named because it borrows its form from Christianity, though it is of course an empty ‘seat’.

LIsten I wish you well, nor do I make you a Frenchy Ultimatim, although you should review the last few minutes of The Sand Pebbles…”I am a Citizen of the World” BANG.

BANG. You are now.

I think you’ll be alright but you never know. And it’s not up to you nor is it up to yours . You mention the playground in this thread. All you need to know about basics of life and monkey tribes you can learn on the playground, except it’s adults with guns, money, families at stake.

I don’t mind people walking away from a fight or seemingly hopeless cause, but I’m unusually soft in this regard. However once this is done do consider modifying the degree of criticism, some of us must stay in any case, and some of us must by nature and indeed fate fight. Or strive on in other ways. I’m sure you’ve read Taleb, recall the passages on how he counsels by parable expats to forget the old country. Which they never do, indeed he can’t completely take his own advice. I wonder if others can’t either.

but good luck. Others have different paths. And yes you’re at their mercy. Sorry.

That all seems OK, except for the absurd suggestion that I’m more at the mercy of strangers than you are. We’re both ruled by strangers. Only difference, mine are more exotic, and considerably more civilized. Oh, and … I’ve got my family’s passports very near to hand.

now mind you it’s not without progress* or utility but with tremendous limitiations. Really I want them, the enemy to Exit. I’m not exiting anywhere as far as that’s concerned. I can honorably and remaining even within the Oath [careful consideration was given to recanting, rejected as unnecessary under circumstances. For they are long in Breech].

The solution to the problems of the Third World cannot be for the Third World to move to America or the rest of the developed world.

And the solution to the problems of the West is not for the West to move to China. If I don’t want expatriate Somalis moving to my Western nation, then I can hardly turn around and seek to hide in China when my own people are struggling. And they are *my people*. That counts for something. I want to live among my people..

I think there is a kind of cowardice and rationalization going on here, but – whatever. Suit yourself. Live as a perpetual outsider in a country not made for you and that has no particular regard for you. Live as a stranger for the rest of your life.

But my emotional reaction is to say that if/when things go bad in China – if you find yourself in a situation sort of like Frenchy in ‘The Sand Pebbles’, don’t come crying back to us. We don’t need fair weather friends like that.

Yes, as I said in prefacing that last sentence, that was my emotional reaction. I notice you ignored the main points I made in the the first paragraphs of my comment: the solution to the problems of the West for westerners cannot be for the West to move to China, anymore than the solution to Third World problems is for them to move to the West.

Your choice is fine for a smattering of wealthy-enough, worldly types like yourself. It is not an option for 99% of the Western peoples, and if they thought it was and started moving to Asia in significant numbers, the Asians would put a stop to it right quick.

Therefore your suggestions to move to Asia are not serious as real solutions.

Your choice is fine for a smattering of wealthy-enough, worldly types like yourself. It is not an option for 99% of the Western peoples,

It looks rather as if 99% of western peoples are going to perish from this earth. The survivors will be oddball types, subscribers to reactionary and rather silly religions in barren edge regions like Alaska.

Singapore is a trap. Smart people go to Singapore, they don’t reproduce. People illegally hiding out in the wilds of Chernobyl do reproduce. Chernobyl is a trap. People there turn into primitives.

If you teach your elite to hate western civilization, whites, and modern technology, you are not going to have any of them for much longer.

The west conquered the world and launched the scientific and industrial revolutions starting with restoration England conquering the world and launching the scientific and industrial revolutions.

The key actions were making the invisible college into the Royal society – that is to say, making the scientific method, as distinct from official science, high status, and authorizing the East India company to make war and peace – making corporate capitalism high status. Divorce was abolished, and marriage was made strictly religious, encouraging reproduction.

Everywhere in the world, capitalism is deemed evil, the scientific method is low status, and easy divorce and high female status inhibits reproduction. If women get to choose, they will choose to have sex with a tiny minority of top males and postpone marriage to the last minute – and frequently to after the last minute. (“Top” males in this context meaning not the guy in the corner office, but tattooed low IQ thugs)

We need a society that is pro science, pro technology, pro capitalism, which restricts female sexual choice to males that contribute positively to this society, and which makes it safe for males to marry and father children. Not seeing that society anywhere, and those few places that approximate some few aspects of this ideal are distinctly nonwhite.

“When China runs into trouble, its you who will be expendable.” — The level of implicit or explicit “who’s going to look after me?” maundering in this thread would be unbelievable to anyone who thought people might actually at least pretend to care about the future of civilization with a decent minimum of objectivity. The West is one giant welfare system to you guys. No wonder it’s so over.

The purpose of any government is to be a large security claim. Of course we want someone to look after us. That’s the whole point to having a government in the first place. This does not mean that we want a government that benefits the weak at the expense of the greater, but it does mean that we either have a government that looks after us or we have no government. Otherwise we have chaos and that is antithetical to our goals.

I’m sorry, but I really think you’re taking this China thing too personally. The rest of us disagree with you. We don’t think that the Oriental way is for us. We would forever be outsiders in the Orient, just as they are outsiders here.

“Of course we want someone to look after us. That’s the whole point to having a government in the first place.” — That is not remotely the Neocameral purpose of government (which is also the colonial one). An NRx state exists to optimize the value of sovereign property.

It’s not personal at all. It’s world-historical. I understand people preferring an Occidental NRx state to an Oriental one — trouble is, you don’t have one.

Alfred Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 2:57 am

This is true, but I don’t think there’s an Oriental NRx state, either.

“The West is one giant welfare system to you guys. No wonder it’s so over.”

This is just childish sneering.

What you are discovering is that most NRx-minded people aren’t extreme universalist altruists who want a foreign culture and people to triumph in the name of some abstract principle of ‘civilization.’ I care about my children and my future grandchildren and great grandchildren. I want order and stability for their sake. It was ever thus.

My main problem — your tribal loyalties are on a train-track that leads to you fighting for the Cathedral against a superior civilization. America Is A Communist Country, so your patriotism is hazardous to the world. That’s not helping my children, and actually not yours either.

How, exactly, have I been ‘fighting for the Cathedral against a superior civilization.’ Even assuming China currently has a superior civilization, which hasn’t been demonstrated.

I agree that fighting for the Cathedral doesn’t help my children and their children, but you haven’t presented any argument at all that fighting for China, whatever that would even mean, will help them either. You haven’t presented any argument at all, just enjoined us to sacrifice ourselves for the abstract principle of order. Extreme universalist altruism wasn’t a sneer, it was a description.

admin Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 5:22 am

You’ve misread the tense (I was unclear). “Train-track” means a near-inevitable trajectory. The Cathedral has an existential interest in either subverting China, or defeating it. Otherwise it loses the world order this century. We know where the heart of the Cathedral lies. When it comes to Democracy (= America) vs China, which side are you on? You’ve already more or less declared a determination to side with ethnic kin, even if they’re spreading democratic ruin by guile and force across the earth. That’s absolutely wrong, of course, but it’s also leading your people still deeper into calamity, so — even relativistically — it’s a disastrously perverted pursuit of self-interest. I have to go Godwin on your ass for just a moment to note that Germans didn’t have any good options during the Third Reich (they should have escaped in advance).

How am I asking anybody to sacrifice anything? All I’m arguing is that the rotten cores of the West aren’t in any position to preach anything to anybody, and the one culture that is conspicuously taking an alternative path merits some friendly ideological reinforcement.

@ admin,
Perhaps we are still not communicating. It sounds to me like you are saying something like the following:

Your particularism has been and/or inevitably will be suborned to the service of militant universalism. Therefore, in the service of the universal principle that particularism is superior to universalism, you should betray your particularism.

I agree with you that the first sentence is probably true. But if it is, it creates an unsolvable dilemma. The second sentence doesn’t follow from the first because it merely denies the dilemma and ends up being self-contradictory because of it.

VXXC Reply:March 18th, 2014 at 11:05 am

“America Is A Communist Country, so your patriotism is hazardous to the world.”

Oh Dear. America isn’t a Communist Country. America has an alien and if you like Communist government that harnessed America to it’s cause in the name of a democracy they quietly smothered in the 1930s.

We’ve only just recently become aware of this, and hardly been idle. It’s rather huge in terms of coming to grips with for one person taking the red pill, this is tens of millions/hundreds of millions rather being forced to some degree of red pill.

You know no one noticed here what was wrong until Yarvin circa 2007, you certainly noticed something was wrong. So the oldest of what we’ve been calling NRxn is 6 years, and we haven’t been calling it NRxn or indeed anything longer than say…2009?

2009 is exactly the beginning of the American demos Reaction. So get over yourselves on how clever and perceptive you are, all of you. That’s juvenile prog snarky behavior. So we we’re blessed or gifted to get the word a few weeks or months earlier, if we can even say that. The Tea Party was organized from scratch by a few then more stay at home moms who’s high philosophy was they keep the household/small business budget and saw ruin. Those few stay at home moms have accomplished 10000X Fold more than all of us so far, we and ye really need to get over yourselves.

The Cathedral isn’t on an inevitable collision course with China, or Russia, or any Foreign power. Except America, which is the most foreign of all nations to the Cathedral and the most hated and feared. We’re in the way, which is all that’s ever necessary to raise leftist hatred to insane levels.

No the Cathedral isn’t on a track track inevitable collision with anyone except the American Demos, and the contest is far from certain. However the Cathedral seems to realize that the gap toothed white ones so mocked here and elsewhere will not surrender so easily, indeed have been in all out arms race since Nov 2008 over this very matter of NO.

No one here including me has achieved what any random Tea Party Mom has done. Difference is I admit it, while others mock them.

Oh come on. Cheering the Tea Party differs from cheering governor Romneycare only in degree. Today’s tea party is not only to the left of the 2009 Tea Party, but to the left of 2008 Obama. Tomorrows Tea Party will be to the left of 2014 Obama.

I did Dubai for a couple years and the ex-pat disconnect for me was the utter corruption, incompetence and lack of social capital that tend to characterise Anglo civil society. I was shaken down for bribes, beseeched for funds by dervish down & outs and it generally engendered in me a contempt that was caustic– a feeling I did not arrive there with. More than anything, my time in the ME turned me towards NRx.

Maybe China/Asia is different. I have a friend who’s been in Thailand for going on 20 years and he loves it. For me the answer was Oz– yes, an outpost of the Cathedral but the influences here are fair fainter and more tolerable.

I do agree that exile– whether physical or spiritual– is the rationale response to the impending collapse. The ingredients for a DE future are only now starting to appear (not least, courtesy of Mssr. Land and others).

I’ve followed Moldbug since Spring Festival in 2008 allowed me to catch up on his (then already VERY voluminous) archive – I was captivated, and have cultivated my reactionary mindset ever since. That Spring Festival I was in Yantai, in Shandong province, and I’d end up spending 4 years total in China (most in Shanghai).

I’m back in Canada, now, and a lot of what’s being said on both sides of this argument ring true. But Ex-Pat’s observations above ring truest to my own assessment of what I saw (with a few extra doses of “caustic,” if you please). I bear no love for the PRC admin – in too many ways, on so many levels, it has earned my measured contempt. Beijing officials ordering the burying a train wreck with still living victims inside, only to be physically fought off by firefighters on the scene captures all-too-well the very small regard any semblance of ‘leadership’ there has for truth (and we’re the crowd that holds that once you’re an enemy of the truth, you’re toast … Lord, I missed toast when I was there!).

Those failures exist beside the strengths the PRC has exhibited in building … something … that has lifted many millions (a few of whom I was privileged enough to meet) out of poverty. I suppose the WISEST one can say of that big, giant, bumbling THING is that, in Moldbug’s words, “it is as well governed as a THING like [China] could be expected to be governed.” The subway there always ran on time, when it wasn’t … um… crashing into other trains like the one in Xintiandi, in 2011, due to the tech having been stolen and misunderstood … investigations into which are never effective because Heaven (from which mandates come) forfend anyone be able to claim, pace Obama, “China,you didn’t build that!”

I think we best leave the extreme “Love it/Hate it!” for those with borderline personality disorder – the PRC is certainly … something!

I agree. My dialectical exaggeration demands correction. The resilient components:
(a) Hong Kong and Singapore are the most functional societies in human history, and obvious models for NRx emulation (as of course Moldbug insists).
(b) The PRC government system provides a better foundation for the emergence of sound administration than the liberal-democratic nightmare in the West.

Yes, I think that’s fair – despite problems, I really hold out a great deal of hope that it’s Asia that will more readily adopt NRx approaches in a pragmatic way. There’s already a lot of discussion between S’pore and its leadership and China to that end. They’ve expressed an expectation that China should be capable of what S’pore has built; they’re aware that there is a non-Cathedral system to follow.

I should also have emphasized in my above post how much I appreciate your observation in the OP, as well, that it’s truly refreshing to be immersed in a society where the messages directed at everyone bounce off you, to no effect, and where, similarly, you aren’t looked to in conversation to have an opinion on everything political. I’ve returned to Canada and am able to laugh at advertising more contemptuously, shop less marketing-consciously, and sneak up on unsuspecting progs with more stealth, inserting little red pills into conversations (if only for my own enjoyment). Being in China gave me that perspective, and for that I’m grateful; I’m grateful to be home, too.

Anyway shouldn’t we then discuss the particular ways in which is actually better or worse administrated? Instead than assuming it is because they got fast trains and huge government buildings. You wanna talk education? Banking? The public sector? Industrial policy? All interesting topics. But I don’t see an argument anywhere.

What are you expecting from one blog post? A comprehensive analysis of Chinese governance? This post is only tangentially about that, in any case — the central point: Reactionaries should expect their relationship to political authority to be absolutely alienated. Few of them have thought that through, even minimally.

You can’t seriously think the Chinese government is not paying attention to the mewlings of the citizenry.

The government is obsessed with public opinion, both to co-opt it and influence it, and runs a massive propaganda apparatus to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. There’s a reason you can’t read what you want, that TV is full of minority kids dancing for the glory of the Chinese Nation, that labor laws are more restrictive than most countries in Europe.

Do you remember that the maglev was planned to go to Hongqiao and Hangzhou, but the people of Shanghai complained about fears of cancer from radiation or something and it got canned? Not to talk of the myriads of chemical plants not opened because of local protests, the endless problems with land seizures, the high education racket, etc.

The amount of feedback that the Chinese government gets from its people seems to me to be no lower than the US or any other electoral system. Elections are rigged easily and have been for decades, the mewlings of the citizenry only have impact to the extent that factions of the elite use them to justify their policies. And that happens in China all the time too.

Yes, you’re right, China isn’t Singapore (and Singapore isn’t a full-blown Neocameralist state). My sole, modest claim is that the foundations are in place in China to build a sound, non-demotist governmental system. Right now it’s very deeply flawed, but not — unlike America — fundamentally ruined. Lots of things could go wrong. Cathedral onslaught is the gravest threat.

I am in China. I see much of the elite as pro-Western and trying to emigrate, although there are the clear exceptions, I don’t see them as a majority yet. The highly educated classes often hold the same positions as your average graduate of Berkeley or Harvard, except for their positions on issues such as Taiwan, Tibet and the South China Sea. Granted, I don’t think this Western thought has very deep roots, but it is there. On the other hand, crimethink in China is strictly political. I can’t help but notice that most of the Chinese calling for regime change would fit in well in the Cathedral.

I do expect Confucianism will revive, it seems inevitable because it’s obviously where they will go once they get their civilizational confidence back. Right now though, I see a lot of prideful and boastful kids in the military looking to settle a score, and the pragmatic generals who experienced Korea are dying off. Many educated Chinese still care what foreigners think of them. I don’t know how it is further south, but in the Northeast there are stickers in restaurants and on cars saying “The diaoyu are China’s!” It is going to get messy, maybe very soon depending on how the credit bubble comes apart.

I want to thank you for the lively debate. I am new to the whole Neoreactionary thing, having previously been liberal (in my early 20s), libertarian (in my mid-late twenties), and even paleo-conservative. I’ve only been around the last few months, by discovering Hoppe, then Moldbug, then, slowly, everyone else. I just discovered your blog last month.

The meaning of place and wandering (or topos and plane in the Greek) is as always, ever-returning and always-concerning. While to wander is not to be lost, neither is to be found in the same place the same as being found. To grasp place-ness requires knowing one’s place, which for a Roman or Eastern Christian, or any woman of good cheer, is easily available. For the rest we are to pulled in all directions like a wandering star, or worse, like a traveler on the sea adrift without a star. The star is a symbol of the angel (of a greater or lesser sort) and to us the angel is a persecuting alien, or a giant space monster. Of course, the notion of the angel brings to mind the fact that malakhim are primarily messengers from God, which brings us back to the Mandate of Heaven.

Elsewhere it is said, “without a vision my people perish”, and on the other hand, Lao Tsu has harsher words for this condition, for when the way is lost. Plane refers to the planet, or wanderer as they were called in the old heaven, which has no fixed position in the firmament and sometimes moves in a retrograde fashion. Topos is the same word from which we get topography, which can be thought of as a kind of backdrop against which the planet wanders, and to which he returns at the end of his course. The planet would be a useless guide, since he himself is unfixed in position (or as we know, relatively unfixed to a significant degree.) While in the old hierarchies they imaged these heavenly bodies as being in some kind of ideal stasis, the reality scarily matches the old Christian contention about these pagan gods symbolized and named with the planets: as demons.

The traveler must look to a vision to find his place, while the one rooted can forget to look to the heavens at all for apparently he has no need of such guidance. The rooted one who does not look to heaven is as lost as the traveler adrift without a star, and if as in our time the artificial light of an old civilization bleaches out the stars, as it has both literally and symbolically, how does he, in Einstein’s universe, know whether he is still or adrift?

But the traveler has a special peril along with his special focus: the star he follows to establish his place, or the topography within which he moves, is not a star but a planet, he does not follow Heaven’s mandate, but a demon.

This PLA interface just rebooted my browser and wiped out my civilizational defense comments. Kindly forward this complaint to management. The PLA can do better.

I mean it’s embarrassing for Americans as well when the PLA fails to meet high standards for web interfaces, we trained them. And invented it. During the nadir of our moral decline in the 70s no less was the breakout.

I mean really, the PLA is gonna lose face if this interface keeps acting flaky.

There’s no collision course between reactionaries in the West and China.

There’s a collision course between reactionaries in the West and the Cathedral.

If we’re staying here, we have to fight it. “Intellectual” (heh) ethno-socialists have repeatedly expressed a willingness to ally with anyone in order to defeat the Cathedral. They’d love some Chinese backing.

Alternatively, we could just disband, join other civilizations and sit out the greatest conflict of this age, relaxing poolside in a traditionalist paradise with the Yanomamo tribesmen.

America’s elites are rotten at the head and the rot spreads down. But never deep.

Not to the people, nor to the critical heroic trades of military, police, firefighters/EMTs.

Why critical? Well LIFE OR DEATH that’s why.

I have yet to hear of any widespread corruption there, most people on this part of the Internet or anywhere’s opinion of corrupt police practices for instance can be boiled to: Cop confiscated my drugs and let me off with a warning. Perhaps you’d prefer Jail Sweetie?

If you define a nation by it’s elites and perhaps this is normally a wise practice then America might indeed be doomed, despite it’s matchless advantages in geography, resources, and yes it’s people.

But in America the very elites define their very being in opposition to all that is America, occasionally breaking out the flags when they want something just as the Bedouin had the flags of every nation in the 1991 Desert Storm coalition armies in their vans.

Our elites aren’t American, indeed they define themselves in opposition to the very bedrock culture and only pretend at democracy for instance, just as they pretend at social democracy in Europe, and for a time pretended at Communism in the USSR. At the present the greatest of these seems to be banking, and our actual politics bankruptcy settlement.

Their actual loyalties are to themselves and the Cathedral.

In any case I live here, and no they haven’t rotted us out. They’ve taken 1/3 of us as causalities to be sure, and spread corruption through the educational system and media. But we’re not even rotted out in the majority, no.

It’s a lousy bet against us. Too much going for us, and too many indicators of revivals and the desire to live, to strive. Our forms of government for instance have built in resiliency and compartmentalization of administration and enforcement that reflect of course who we were, and remain. Our elites can only make so much headway against tens of thousands of distinct entities in every sense including legal.

Remember in America government was an afterthought. So is our long delayed recognition of how dangerous ours has become. We were changing the channel, like most adults do when TMZ/Celebrity Train Wreck comes on. We changed the channel on politics from 1992 to about 2007 domestically, and 1992-2001 in Foreign/Defense policy. And of course the Cathedrals entire purpose and point is political power.

Well we’ve realized recently we can’t change the channel away on our government, our response may save us and save humanity from us. If we take your advice then humanity has no refuge. I only am committed to America, the rest of you I wish you well and Go Hang.

Remember in America government was an afterthought. In the 1990’s exhausted by war and politics since Wilson and only given the mildest of respites with Coolidge, Eisenhower and in continuous political turmoil and war since 1933 …changed the channel in the 90s.

And if you didn’t change the channel during Bill Clinton you’ve got less of an appetite for porn than James Deen.

And when we relaxed vigilance as usual the eternal army of dissent and their er..accountants…pounced. The Central effect of Clinton was the overnite criminalization of Americas powerful cold war tools of Finance. Treasury, IMF, Fannie/Freddie GSEs, State&Co were put in the same room as the Russian Mob – the Mafia that brings in the entire world of mafias, yep – and Wall Street. The rape of Russia and the post USSR countries was the vehicle by which instantly government was pervasively corrupted. And as any fish monger in Queens or China Town can tell you once they’re in you’re never out.

The only ones in that entire ensemble above with any options are the mob, they have each other. The rest are trapped in the gravity of their own vices, a hopelessly entangled mesh of greasy, twisted wiring they cannot escape.

First, for VXXC, whose comments I very much rate. I’d prefer your scenario over any NRx forecast, but I suspect we’re past the point when real reformation is possible. We’re talking about root causes which have existed arguably since the very founding of the Republic. Government was NOT an after thought to the Founders– that is has become so is an indictment, not a positive. I won’t attempt to enter into a full debate on whether it is too late or not to resurrect the “American Dream”– but would question, given how it has metabolised, whether this is a desirable outcome at all.

For those bashing our convivial host for choosing an ex-pat lifestyle because it is the soft option, all I’d say is: try it. Being an ex-pat may sound like being on permanent holiday but it is actually incredibly demanding and one of the biggest challenges one might face in life. You pay a huge price BUT you also gain a perspective that many might benefit from. Rather than bash NL’s personal decision, try listening to what he’s saying and ask yourself: why has he come to these conclusions? I’d suggest your worldview changes– and you become more objective about things you had taken for granted. That’s all I think he’s suggesting.

America’s elites are rotten at the head and the rot spreads down. But never deep.

Not to the people, nor to the critical heroic trades of military, police, firefighters/EMTs.

Go to youtube and look up videos of police shooting dogs.

Also observe that in the confrontation with occupy. five hundred police were frequently strangely unable to control a few hundred occupy, while a handful of rentacops were able to control a few hundred occupy. (Which is why I am betting on feudalism)

Similarly on you tube, you will find videos where three armed criminals wearing black hoodies (to advertise that they are bad guys, thus intimidating) burst into a shop, and one security guard (wearing white to advertise that he is the good guy, thus not intimidating customers) pulls his gun, and without pausing to consider that he risks his life for a rather small salary, starts shooting, and the three gun toting bad guys flee like rabbits that have woken a wolf.

But you will not find any similar videos of heroic cops facing down bad guys at overwhelming odds, nor rentacops shooting dogs.

I’m quite shocked by the hostile-to-neutral reactions here. It’s not like our host is saying anything we didn’t already know was on his mind. Reading this thread you’d think the ethnic-nationalists are the last of the ‘tri-alliance’ standing (which was always the fear – I never bought it from the get-go).

I agree with Jim completely here:

“What we need, and do not have, is some place with an official belief system that is nationalist, pro capitalist, and anti socialist.”

The West is no longer the place for this kind of system. We have to accept that.

I’m not interested in desirable outcomes that require social engineering. I’m going to say again the quarrel is actually with Human nature, which of course Admin openly trumpets, which is fine, he’s being honest.

I am interested in sane and possible outcomes. I’m not interested in perfecting what already worked because it’s not desirable to some here. I am interested in Restoration, it helps when it’s sitting of course right exactly in front of us still quite extant. The New Deal managerial state, that is the Cathedral can’t seem to kill it. They’ve been trying for a hundred years, legally they usurped it with the New Deal. Financially they usurped it with the Federal Reserve. However the only reason anyone took notice was until 1971 with the Federal Reserve [off the gold standard and off to the inflationary merry go round].

In the case of the New Deal INC not until Clinton’s abuses of the system did anyone notice problems with the New Deal..and it’s when the abuses came due upon us that we noticed. We may shine the incandescent lights of self regard upon the truly transcendent gems of our intellects all we like [and we do so like], until the pain of bankruptcy hit we didn’t take notice. Did we? Is it an accident that UR and Moldbug deconstruct the New Deal with Machavellian tools with the onset of the Financial/Housing crisis in 2007?

Another way of putting this is our Hamsters were quite busy humming away on the rationalization engine wheels until the spokes began to snag on grim reality of bankruptcy. Because we’re all so goddamn smart, once we get some broken bones too.

[Yes me too, mind you I was pretty tied up with the whole war thingie from 9/11 forward until my return from Iraq [again] in 2007, really don’t see MM until 2009 over at Abu Muqawama.]

So we noticed when there was pain. We’re speaking here and perhaps acting or considering it [one action being Ex-Pat/flight] because we all felt the collective pain and got smart about it.

And into Action: whatever action is taken should be realistic and the plan with the best chance of success, I sum it as Atavism. That is to say they have just noticed they don’t govern here in America and are quite riled about it. There is really no indication that the actual real world sides are as so: 1] the faction of the managerial state that exists despite the real fact that it’s republican and constitutional legitmacy is melting away, they have real money and real power VS 2] the emergent faction of republicanism and constitutionalism with a very angry grass-roots political organization called “Tea Party” that inflicted massive and hugely shifting defeats on the Official Party of the State despite only being in existence less than a year at the time of nov 2010 elections. This phenom of republicanism and constitutionally limited govt was accompanied by huge nationwide protests that are geniunelly grass-roots. [if you still don’t get that the Tea Party is indeed grass roots not astroturf ask a Progressive, they quite admit it].

And something else happened. We began an internal arms race the second week Nov 2008 that has never stopped, and periodically wipes out all stocks for months at a time, the peaks being elections or anti-gun pushes [post newtown].

There is never any such thing as an insignificant arms race. Especially internally.

Then something else happened, the GOP made damn sure the guy who was determined not to get the job was the Presidential nominee, and it turns out the entire alphabet soup pressured the Tea Party and made their lives miserable, IRS in particular. And they got away with it. This means the republican/constitutional faction knows they have no vote, and that the GOP cancels it anyway. So we have no democracy after all.

The last time the gap toothed redneck scum were summariliy dismissed was Dred Scott. Then this gap toothed scotsman named John Brown picked up a claymore and…

Now disagree with their premises or conclusions, it’s really not relevant. What’s done is done whether it’s the 1850s/1860s or 2010 to now, if it was done, it was done.

What’s relevant in life is what people did, and what they’re likely to do. Run your superior super hamsters all you like.

Now factions 1 and 2 could still work this out, if we weren’t into hyper-bankruptcy and there was enough money to satisfy everyone, if party Cathedral/Managerial New Deal State could be trusted and was relatively sane, and there isn’t enough money and trust only exists in huge deficits. Oh, and the insane have the helm. I’m limiting sanity to contact with reality, the TMZ media circus with the end state of reporters being part of the story and TMZ celeb loop themselves [what the reporters wanted all along, status in DC] is not in contact with reality. Their animal instincts sense doom, but the hamster is in full override.

Meanwhile outside the Acela corridor…the republican faction has realized they don’t have a vote, a voice, and frankly exit’s not an option for them. But guns galore are. And from Dec 12 to at least July 13 there weren’t any, and ammo was scarce and expensive [except for the russian stuff, TULAMMO, BEAR that eats the gun up].

But VXXC you’re dreaming. Well there’s a lot of gapteethed with same dream, and sorry not all of them are gapteethed either. In CT for instance the State got some of it’s antigun legislation through and then like NY State…choked at the enforcement part. They blinked, flinched, and snarkily backed down. The CT governor snarked “you lost” then RAN.

Just happened.

The predictable result did too, it whetted the appetites for aggression of the MOLON LABE crowd. If you still believe in the Managerial State’s omnipotence ..why isn’t everyone who uttered, wore, wears, posts, writes MOLON LABE in jail or probation? Why weren’t the arms confiscated? Why didn’t the State having thrown down the gauntlet act?

The certain result of throwing down gauntlets and challenges then backing down from what is ladies past the challenge of the outlaw into the banner of revolt – MOLON LABE – was and is to increase the aroused aggressive instincts of the party that won the faceoff.

And that’s just CT this month. never mind that that the gapteeth have been getting away with MOLON LABE since dec 2012, and everyone from Cuomo’s NY State Police to Bammy backed down. Maybe it wasn’t seen in Shanghai or Australian media. It was certainly noticed here.

Well a whiff of grapeshot…uh, actually no.

Because you see the police and military…come from…the thede they’d be grapeshotting. Even when they’re not white all the way to coal black and the hues in between, they’ve adopted thede warrior culture, as have I. I was raised in Scotch-Irish country even though I’m actually ethnic Irish Catholic prole [prole is said without trace of humility. none]. Then there’s the Oath, and the inclinations of the police and military aren’t to prey, but protect. Oh and they never cut us in on it. Indeed their favorite actions and policies towards us range the gamut of betrayals and humiliations, long nursed within us and our thede.

Indeed we’re raised to hate them and do, and it’s from childhood. Taking the Oath and bearing arms for it has been an act of defiance against the Liberals since the 1970s.

Now with all that having my back why do I want to risk Ex-Pat? Or go anywhere. I feel real safe right here. I really do.

Now if you think my Thede is actually facing you..yeah. Uh…RUNMOTHERFUCKERRUN. Yes. Run like Hell. Or if you don’t wanna see whatever transpires and who knows..leave.

On Expats – look I understand and respect your decision, however please recognize it’s not everyones, nor of course is it open to everyone. And having made your ExPat decision kindly abide by it and don’t tell us what to do from 10,000 miles away. I don’t accept the Pentagons 10,000 mile screwdriver and shan’t accept yours. I mean you and indeed your host nations only well and no harm. I hope you’re safe and you prosper. Now don’t tell us how to proceed unless you wanna come back and live with the consequences of your counsel. I respect Mr Land’s decision, now don’t tell us how to run our world if you won’t get down in it with us. I’m not gonna suggest to you how to talk to the PLA, etc…

PS–If I meet a unnatural fate it will likely be administered by my own. If you do…

[…] Neoreaction between those who favor subversion and those who favor exit. However, when Nick Land recently made his case for the merits of exit, fireworks broke out in the comment section. Certain of the Sino-Supremacist remarks Land made no […]

First, let me say: love your work. I really do look forward to your postings as you are one of the more accessible posters (to me anyway) on this blog. You’re fantastic.

Second, I was not aware of the shenanigans in CT– I will do some research on that. It is significant, esp in the NE (I grew up in MA).

For the record, I am thoroughly sympathetic with the Tea Party but I’m still pessimistic since it lacks the ethical and intellectual grounding to be truly sustainable. It seems more fated to be White Russian than Restoration. If they “win”, Glen Beck et al would ignore contributing causes to the Prog eschaton immanentization (like HBD) and all then you’ve got is a hollow breathing space. And they won’t win, since as you point out, the game is permanently rigged. In any case, I don’t think we’re at the stage where we can mount a significant response. For one thing, the leadership isn’t there and you need leadership of all kinds. Moldbug nails this in his focus on elite formation– and having to convert from the Cathedral smarties. I love your thede of military & cops, but without leadership, their instinctive response won’t be enough.

As for the expat thing, for me it was something that happened years ago and was not a decision made on the basis of politics. I still hold a passport and even voted in the 2012 election (last time I’ll bother doing that). I DO feel better about being where I am but have enormous support for fellow NRxers in the US (and anywhere).

Well Oz – I am assuming Australia – is probably one of the safest places on earth for Americans.

The significance of the Tea Party is the people awoke and self-organized. They are still. I’m not holding out hope for electoral politics, who wins is immaterial. All Presidents since FDR have in one way or another fed the bureaucracy. If they weren’t feeding the domestic side they were feeding the foreign policy or defense side, nearly all pushed guns and butter. Defense of course would not be necessary on this scale and cost had not the Presidents and State Dept conquered an Empire, however well and lightly it was administered until Johnson. DOD does not sign treaties, it is charged with defending their comittments.

The Tea Party is important not because of any achievements at the polls, but because millions self-organized and became aware. I daresay they’re getting wiser still.

@Jim. Nothing people do is baked in. Silicon chips and electric circuits are baked in.
Men make things happen, or grumble and let other men make things happen. Or do as they are told for a variety of reasons.

As to all men are created equal they were rejecting rule by Kings and Nobility. Something that will never now be accepted here, and it’s foolish to pursue it. It would also be costly to the pursuers, at best they’d be dismissed as cranks.

Nothing people do and certainly not nations is baked in by the logic of words, however important they were. By the way the rule of Kings was also rejected in..England. Rather decisively. I can’t imagine what man on earth living I’d trust that power to, we’d have a certain madmen. Want a King? Herman Van Rompuy, King by proclamation. A real King and what most of them were like.

As I’ve noticed before many here have complaints with “democracy” and “demotism” that are actually complaints with Human Nature. At least Land is honest about it, he’d replace us completely.

We have the legacy government underneath the now monstorous and ruinous, insane managerial state put in by the New Deal and World War 2. By the way no it becoming monstorous wasn’t “baked in” either, none of them could have suspected they’d spawn selfish and ruinious yet banal and vapid demon brats. I mean the Boomers.

However if you believe it’s baked in, then sit back and watch some cooking. That we can’t go on like this would seem to be “baked in” by the ruinous finances combined with extremely high mistrust and internal militarization of the citizenry. Or perhaps we will. Nothing in the future is certain, as nothing that men would do in the past was.

Listen your decision to go to AU [I assume] is your business, as is any ex-pats. Others are making a decision to stay here. Now at a certain point when people say give up we’re doomed, DOOMED DOOMED IT’S BAKED IN, it was all hopeless once men thought they could self govern blah blah, it will be objected to..

Fair enuf VXXC– fair enuf! I do hope you’re right and I’m wrong about the state of things– do believe me when I say that.

I think we pretty much have experienced the same path here, based on what you’ve shared. Up until 2012, I was still optimistic. I admit I was on the Bush train, supported the war/s, et al. Read VDH and bought the neocon line. I was a Reagan Republican Conservative (and had been from the mid 70s–roar!). Then 2012 happened and I needed to make some dialectical sense of the whole. When I did, I began to see the path here as a lot longer than I had originally thought. Other realities began to make more sense and it suddenly looked to me like Act 3, which meant my focus shifted to the epilogue and sequel. For you, it is Act 2. Not to get all relative, but it seems to be just a matter of perspective. I’m no doom monger; just trying to square my thinking with my perceptions (just as you are).

And you’re spot on regarding Australia– it really is God’s Country down here. Beautiful people, culture and environment. Of course, if the US spins, Australia will absolutely be in a tough place…

What do Tea Party congressmen vote for when they are actually seated in congress?

In 2013 December, they voted for the Murray-Ryan budget, a “bipartisan” budget.

The constitutional thing to do is that the house of reps decides the budget, and the senate and the president accepts it or rejects it. So the party that has the majority in the house of representatives should simply pass the budget it wants, and adjourn.

Instead, they pre-capitulated – passing a budget far, far to the left of 2008 Obama, functioning as the outer party, the lower status second class servants of the inner party.

China’s history is one long series of revolutions and chaotic infighting followed by dynasty building, thus there’s no reason to think that its future will be any different and that its current stability is anything but ephemeral and inclined to give way to chaos. Of course China is alien to the Cathedral because the Cathedral is inherently a Western condition and China has always had its unique cultural and civilizational heritage. The infatuation with China doesn’t make sense. Japan is even more economically successful and is equally nationalistic and repellant towards opening its borders to world’s dregs too, so it makes just as much sense to focus on it as China. One may retort with its welfare system, but it’s only for the actual Japanese people and Singapore has plenty of such social programs. Chinese people are more civilized: is this serious? It’s not my experience from living for extended periods of time in China. East Asian people are genetically less prone towards violent behavior, but this isn’t unique to the Chinese. Remember that China is all about face: 5000 years of civilization and Confucianism are facades that are held up for others to see but that are now devoid of real substance. The Chinese miracle was made by people who are old now, and their grandchildren are no more prepared for making a civilization than their western counterparts. Soon it will start to decline, and then the few opportunities available to Westerners will dry up.

The condition of the Cathedral is Western, and the solution will be Western too.

True, but my point is that outcome is important and that because there is no threat of the Cathedral in East Asia that regime type is quite insignificant. Everything that a reactionary may find appealing about China is equally present in Japan or South Korea, plus a greater standard of living, better opportunities, and an easier acceptance of white foreigners. The only reason to hold China above the rest, despite its obvious shortcomings, is for an abstract political reason maintained in spite of palpable realities, and this sounds an awful lot like religion to me. The political is relevant, but so is the social. Or is North Korea another beacon of Nrx hope?

Democracy is doomed in the west because of its deleterious altruism, but it’s not necessarily the case that the East, with its different culture, will ever succumb to the same fate. Japan is just as good for a reactionary because its transition wasn’t precipitated by a violent revolution, whereas present day China was catalyzed by populist madness. A follower of Moldbug knows that it’s the revolutionary insanity engendered by democracy in the West that is the real enemy, and in this sense China has been one of the worst offenders for thousands of years. One only needs to hold out for a few decades until revolution once again sweeps across China; to assume otherwise is ahistorical.

China’s history is one long series of revolutions and chaotic infighting followed by dynasty building, thus there’s no reason to think that its future will be any different and that its current stability is anything but ephemeral and inclined to give way to chaos.

Spandrell beat me to the point, but a walk around urban China will demonstrate to you that there are as many emasculated young males shuffling about there as there are in Japan. It must therefore be the case that this isn’t the doing of the Cathedral but a predisposition of East Asians or their shared culture, perhaps within the context of capitalism.

As for the Northern Song, I don’t find it very reassuring that the best example of a functional Chinese regime was a millennium ago, was a fraction of the size as the state known as China today, and lasted less than America. Hong Kong, like many former British colonies, may have once matched the neoreactionary model, but as China increasingly exerts influence over the previously veritable city-state it becomes nothing of much notability.

It is unseemly for ‘reactionaries’ to be plotting revolutions, or anything remotely like them.

How about neoreactionaries? Along with Quote Notes (#68), this does openly reveal the geographic splinters (or interests) within NRx. Deploy Kurtz? Where? And for whom?

The very last thing that is wanted here [China], from a reactionary perspective, is a reboot. On the contrary, the overwhelming priority is conservative…

Doesn’t fragmentation (de-escalation) have to occur conservatively? Isn’t there a protective interests issue? The order in which the dominoes should fall? Or is that the whole problem – de-escalation doesn’t happen without sudden collapse? Does the chief vampire have to go first?

Any guaranteed ex-pat editorial/assistant editor/editorial assistant/general dogsbody jobs going in Shanghai? We could make a trade deal – you sort me out with something in China and then I’ll show you the agricultural ropes in Cambodia (where I’ll wing it…)?

Ha. We’re looking for the same kind of work. I’m trying HK and Singapore currently. Creating a little network online to do some of my bidding. It’s really tough. Check this group out. Even though it’s allsorts of jobs, you can find people who are in the know regarding SEA jobs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5651910697

This is one of the best threads of XS. I never noticed it before and wish I had–there are many out-of-the-way threads I’ve thought that about. Someone ought to compile a Xenosystems “highlight reel” in the way Unqualified Reservations has moldbuggery.blogspot. (Speaking of the latter, does anyone have any favorites of MM’s that don’t feature on moldbuggery?) I mean, if admin wants to keep it arcane that’s one thing, but who cares what he wants? Jk.

Erikson, I’m interested what you would say about certain topics raised in this thread. Specifically about the fact of Immanence that our moderator has allied with “the East” by living there with his body. That really is a can of worms, too many things are passed over in silence. Strauss’s essay on Heidegger called “Existentialism” endorses admin’s decision, it seems. I believe Taoism and Zen are the truest religions so far, but that doesn’t preclude my contempt for the Asians for falling short of the West. Maybe it’s time to flip but I’m taking books of Aristotle and Laruelle to Nepal.

“My main problem — your tribal loyalties are on a train-track that leads to you fighting for the Cathedral against a superior civilization. America Is A Communist Country, so your patriotism is hazardous to the world. That’s not helping my children, and actually not yours either… “Train-track” means a near-inevitable trajectory. The Cathedral has an existential interest in either subverting China, or defeating it. Otherwise it loses the world order this century. We know where the heart of the Cathedral lies. When it comes to Democracy (= America) vs China, which side are you on? You’ve already more or less declared a determination to side with ethnic kin, even if they’re spreading democratic ruin by guile and force across the earth.”